The Preserve, Friday Noon

[okteiviakom]

For the fourth time this week, Octavia headed into the preserve. There were two differences to all the other times, though: one, she had her sword at her back, instead of just knives and a throwing star hidden on her. (Although, rest assured, she still had those too.) And two, she wasn't alone. She'd told Duke a long while ago that she'd take him here, and now she was finally making good on that offer.

There was a shift in her demeanor as soon as the woods swallowed them up. Octavia tended to walk the streets of Fandom like she was expecting to get called upon to march to war at any moment, her stride purposeful and her posture straight to the point of being a little stiff. Here, the way she carried herself became a little more fluid, like she was adapting to the landscape, to having undergrowth with a little give under her feet instead of cobblestone.

Like she was more in her element.

Like she was breathing easier.

"Have you run into the weird deer yet?", she asked Duke as they kept making their way further into the preserve. "Sometimes some of them wander into town."

[ooc: Octavia is here with he who was lovingly modded, but the post is open for your preserve needs!]

Comments

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had considered bringing a rifle. He may have spent more of his time by the water than in the woods, but he'd still grown up in hunting country, and heading into the woods without one felt a little weird. But these woods were a preserve, so he'd stuck with just a machete to go with his usual handgun and collection of utility knives.

Either way, they were a pretty damn well-armed pair.

"Weird deer," he said, thinking, then shook his head. "I think I've heard about them once or twice, but no, I haven't seen them yet. How weird are we talking?"

[okteiviakom]

Octavia shrugged. "Mostly just that they're kind of green."

'Teal' was not part of her vocabulary, no.

"You'd definitely know if you'd seen one."

[betterthanaplan]

"Green deer." Duke shook his head. "I don't know why I'm even surprised." Just wait until he got a load of an alot.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia was steering them towards the stream that ran through the preserve on purpose. Not for the deer or the alots, but some other odd fauna all the same.

"Some of them also used to work for the newspaper in town."

Some of the deer, yes.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke immediately pictured a shamrock green deer wearing Dave Teagues' favorite hat and glasses.

"Of course they did. If the squirrels can do it, why not deer."

[okteiviakom]

"I visited the office a couple of times while someone I knew was running the place." Another tiny shrug. "I don't think he ever got used to them."

Granted, Eddie hadn't stuck around for very long. But, deer journalists. With hooves, trying to type.

She couldn't really blame him.

[betterthanaplan]

Yeah, Duke was trying not to think too hard about the mechanics of it all.

"It's nice to know I'm not the only one who's had trouble getting used to this place."

[okteiviakom]

"You haven't bailed yet," Octavia noted. Lightly, kind of. "So you're doing better than Eddie, so far."

She was keeping her eyes on their surroundings, reading them for the way she wanted to go.

"I think almost everyone has trouble, though."

[betterthanaplan]

"And yet I still feel so new." Duke shook his head. "How long did this Eddie guy stick around?"

[okteiviakom]

"A few months."

Duke actually still had a ways to go to beat him.

[betterthanaplan]

"I've only been here since September," Duke observed. ". . . And that's the first time I've thought of that as 'only'. Huh."

He was actually really seriously considering just sticking around this place for the foreseeable future. That might be the weirdest thing yet.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia glanced over with the faintest smirk. "That's the island getting to you."

Possibly not the island, possibly the people. But she wasn't going to think too deeply about it.

[betterthanaplan]

It was almost like meeting people who seemed to genuinely care about him beyond what he could do for them made him want to stick around!

"Swear to god, if I find out this island brainwashes people, I'm going to be very unhappy." He sighed. "Or I won't, because the island would have brainwashed it out of me. . . ."

[okteiviakom]

Snort. "Well, isn't it better to be happy, anyway?" Octavia asked, lightly. Somewhat.

She wouldn't know.

[betterthanaplan]

"In theory. Seems to me that kind of happiness would be dangerous, though."

Surprise, surprise: he didn't trust "happy".

[okteiviakom]

Octavia shrugged one shoulder, letting the smirk drop from her face and her voice both.

"Guess it would be a little like an anesthetic," she said. "But sometimes... Those have their uses."

[betterthanaplan]

"Now that is definitely true," Duke said. There was a reason he drank as much as he did. "So there's green deer. Any other weird wildlife I should keep an eye out for? There aren't, like, gremlins in the underbrush, is there?"

If there were, he was definitely going to wish he had his rifle.

[okteiviakom]

"Not that I've seen." Although Octavia wasn't entirely unconvinced that gremlins didn't leave her alone just on principle. "There are also these things that I think someone said are called... alots? That aren't in the book Liam gave me."

Neither were the teal deer, either, but at least normal deer were.

[betterthanaplan]

"Alots." Duke pictured some sort of brightly colored, South American bird species. "Doesn't sound familiar. But I don't know land animals as well as sea ones."

[okteiviakom]

He was so, so wrong.

"They're kind of big and... fuzzy?"

Octavia's little frown said she didn't really think that was an adequate description by a long shot, but it was the best she could do. She didn't really know animals very well, neither land nor sea.

[betterthanaplan]

"Like a bear?"

If it was an alot of bears, sure!

He reached back, checking that his gun was still in place in the back of his pants. "They're not aggressive, are they?"

[okteiviakom]

"Sure," Octavia drawled, "I would've definitely still mentioned 'fuzzy' before 'aggressive' if they were."

They'd met, right?

[betterthanaplan]

"Okay, point. Big and fuzzy usually still means dangerous where I'm from, though." Bears, moose, mega-fauna in general tended to fuck your shit right up even when they weren't aggressive. "Even a cow can fucking kill you if you're not careful."

[okteiviakom]

"Well, we don't have cows here," Octavia retorted, "and the alots are peaceful."

As far as she knew, anyway. But, she stopped walking, and held her hand out in a gesture of trying to get him to stop too.

And she listened. "You hear that?" she asked, softly. "The stream."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke stopped, hand drifting back to his gun again. (Look, he was out of his element out here, okay?)

"Yeah," he said after a moment. ". . . Is that a good or a bad thing?"